The present invention generally relates to storage area networks. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods and systems for managing storage area and IP networks in an integrated manner.
In a typical computer system, network management and storage management are usually performed separately by different sets of dedicated management tools. System administrators, especially those who are in charge of network management, have to understand and recognize all the connections between network nodes including routers, switches, servers, client PCs and storage nodes. While network management tools are generally available for IP networks, these tools cannot be used to manage networks that do not utilize IP protocol. Such network management tools typically can be used to perform various network management functions, such as, displaying the topology of a network for purposes of managing the network faults and configurations and showing the network topology regarding physical connections in multi-windows.
With respect to storage management, a storage sub-system is typically attached to and controlled by a server computer. Management of the storage sub-system has generally been subsumed as one of the many management functions performed by the server computer. As a result, storage management, such as, data management functions, is typically supported by most system management tools utilized by the server computer. Typical storage management tools can only manage storage and fiber channel network port connections. Until recently, management of the storage sub-system has been limited locally to within a computer system. That is because elements of the storage sub-system are not distributed over multiple computer networks. Other management functions regarding device management, however, have not been provided by most system management tools.
Due to the continued proliferation of information at different geographic locations, information is increasingly stored on a distributed basis thereby leading to the development of storage area networks (SANs). SANs allow information stored at distributed locations to be shared over computer networks. SAN management tools have been developed and are available to manage SANs. However, these SAN management tools primarily provide functions for managing storage related devices, such as, disk arrays (RAID), fibre channel adapters and fabric switch equipment.
In addition, new transport protocols, such as, SCSI over IP (iSCSI), Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) and internet Fibre Channel Protocol (iFCP) have been recently developed to further enable and facilitate implementation of SANs. So far, management tools for Fibre Channel networks have been developed in order to manage the configuration of Fibre Channel switch equipment. Also, management information definitions for iSCSI and iFCP have been published as draft standard documents by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). These block transport based protocol over TCP/IP are suitable for data communication network among servers and storage devices. Since these recently developed protocols are stacked over the IP protocol, new management method is needed in order to manage an environment that utilizes a mixture of regular IP protocol and these new protocols over IP.
Hence, it would be desirable to have a method and system that is capable of providing network and storage management in an integrated manner in an environment that utilize IP based networks, storage area networks and some hybrid protocol-based networks, such as, iSCSI. From the viewpoint of system operation and management, it would be desirable to incorporate storage sub-systems including RAID and SANs into the overall system management operations, especially IP network management operations, since IP network provides global interoperability for large scale computer systems.